


keep me on the fence

by anicula



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Non-Linear Narrative, cis gals being pals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 01:36:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15450489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anicula/pseuds/anicula
Summary: A week is seven days or 168 hours or 10 080 minutes or 604 800 seconds. Miz manages to make a friend, make more than a friend, lose the more than a friend, and get a kick in the shin from Blair in half that time.





	keep me on the fence

The shiny head of long blonde hair was hard to miss centered as it was in the front row of every class. A total teacher’s pet in all her glory: raising her hand constantly with answers, questions, and comments that managed to delight each and every professor who looked her way. Even her smile was ridiculously photogenic with the most perfect set of teeth Miz had ever seen on a real human being, no - the most perfect set of teeth Miz had ever seen  _period_.

Miz hated her. 

Hated her commercial ready hair, her airy laughs that traveled down the hallways - hated her stupid designer clothes that were as expensive as they were ugly. The professors didn’t care - not about how their favourite pupil was a nightmare in black and ripped cotton - oh, no -  _she’s such a delight Miz, I think you’ll be great as a team!_  

Miz slammed her bag down on the table, rattling the laptops of the people around her. Her friends only jumped slightly out of their seats. 

“So  _you’re_  having a great morning!” Blair smiled brightly up at her, somehow managing to mask all signs of sarcasm from her face.

“The best morning,” Miz answered dryly, setting her coffee down with a bit more care.

“What did Aquaria do this time?” Vixen asked, elbow balanced on her opened textbook.

“Why do you think it’s Aquaria?”

“Girl.” Vixen shot her a look.

“So it’s not Aquaria?” Blair narrowed her eyes, brows already furrowed like the awful amateur detective that she was.

Vixen leaned over and placed her hand on Blair’s arm. “When is it not Aquaria?”

“It’s not Aquaria,” Miz interjected just to put an end to their fruitless speculation.

“It’s not?” The look of astonishment would’ve been offensive coming from anyone but Vixen.

Miz pursed her lips. “It’s mostly not Aquaria,” she amended, lying through her teeth. 

The  _I told you so_  from Vixen to Blair was so smug the people at the next table over looked at them.

“Can we please stop this. My life is not an actual sitcom,” Miz said, squeezing herself between the two of them. 

“Fine, fine,” Vixen relented, “Tell us about your girl troubles, we’re all ears.”

“They’re not girl troubles. I don’t have  _girl_  troubles - I have school troubles,” Miz said, pulling her laptop out of her bag.

“Which center around a girl - hence, girl troubles,” Vixen said matter-of-fact.

Miz bit her tongue to refrain from rolling her eyes like a wayward adolescent youth. “These are real life problems that I’m combating and if you could just-”

“No,” Vixen interrupted, “You do not have real life problems. You have first world white girl problems,” she corrected.

“Fine - white girl problems,” Miz said with a wave of her hand.

“Thank you, I can now fully commit to your sad white girl story - have you still not fucked yet?” Vixen’s delivery was as placid as her word choice was not.

“Vixen!” The soft, swift reprimand from Blair was accompanied by the most theatrical hand to chest Miz had ever seen in her life. Blair’s sole followup was to turn back to Miz and stare expectantly at her, head cocked inquisitively. 

It was good to know that in her moments of need, her friends would be there to mock and laugh at her.

“I hate the both of you.”

“You’re welcome.” Vixen grinned at her.

Whatever Blair was about to say was stopped by the sharp click of her mouth closing and her eyes growing twice as wide like she was a real life cartoon character as she caught sight of something just over Miz’s shoulder.

“What-”

“Hey guys.” The soft drawl was unmistakable. So was the hint of jasmine that had permeated the air around them. A “Morning Miz,” was directed just at her.

“Morning Aqua.” Miz turned to face her, ignoring the look Vixen shot her. “How you doing?”

“Good - I’m doing good,” Aquaria twisted her signet ring round her thumb, the smile on her face hesitant, “I just wanted to see what time you’d be free this afternoon to meet up?”

“My last class is at two, I can meet you after in the lab?” Miz took her phone out, unlocking it to pull up her schedule.

“Yeah, that sounds good. Do we need to get the key from Katya or will the lab still be open?”

Miz held up her key ring. “Got it from Trixie yesterday, we should be good.”

“Awesome, I’ll see you later then.” Aquaria gave all of them a small smile before turning heel to walk back to her seat.

The moment Aquaria left, Vixen turned to Miz, eyebrows raised high. “Aqua? Did I just smack my head and black out? When did  _this_  happen?” She gestured between Miz and the empty space where Aquaria had stood moments before. 

“In the lab,” Miz stopped resisting and rolled her eyes, “Aquaria’s a mouthful.”

“I’ll bet,” Vixen snorted, leaning back in her seat and crossing her arms. 

Blair giggled. Miz focused on staring at the wall behind Vixen’s head, trying to dissociate enough to reroute the completely derailed conversation. 

But Vixen wasn’t done. 

“So did you fuck?,” she pressed, tilting her head towards the beacon of light at the front of the class. “Is ‘in the lab’ what the kids are calling it these days?”

Miz cleared her throat. Blair had given up on giggling and was outright laughing, bent in half over her notes.

“No, it’s not what kids are calling it these days,” Miz said, “It just so happens that Aqua is easier to say when a fire breaks out.”

“From the sexual tension.” Vixen nodded her head sagely. 

“From an idiot who fills their beaker with too much ethanol,” Miz corrected.

“And sexual tension.”

“Why are you so keen on this?”

“Because I’ve spent more time listening to the virtues of one miss Aquafina than I have listening to all my lecturers collectively this entire semester.”

“Don’t forget last semester,” Blair jumped in.

“The last  _year_ ,” Vixen said with a wave of her hand, “Or whenever you had to make up for that first year course and Aquaria ta’d you.”

“This is slander.” Miz sniffed.

“Whatever you say sweaty.” Vixen patted her hand in a mock show of comfort. “Now tell Aunty Vixen where the bad man - or should I say the bad girl? - touched you.”

“No touching happened in the lab,” Miz said to Vixen’s comically overconcerned face, “It’s unhygienic.”

“So touching happened outside of the lab?”

“This is molecular biology, not the spanish inquisition - you should focus on the course,” Miz replied, flipping her hair over her shoulder and nodding towards the professor who had finally made his way into the classroom.

“Excuses, excuses,” Vixen flapped her hands in Miz’s direction. “Don’t forget I know where you sleep.”

“Everyone knows where everyone sleeps - we live in the dorms.”

Vixen’s no doubt witty response was interrupted by the crackling of the sound system coming to life. Her eyes promised retribution the moment class was over.

 

The imminent threat of Vixen executing whatever torture tactics she had learned from a childhood in Chicago to extract the truth from Miz was not enough to distract Miz from the curl of something unidentifiable at the pit of her stomach every time the professor paused for breath and an all too familiar hand shot up into the air.

The truth, and it  _was_  the truth and nothing but the truth though that truth could only ever  _ever_  be examined under the dark of night and beneath  _at least_  two comforters, was that even if Miz hadn’t spent too much of her undergrad degree staring at that pale blonde head from behind a shoddy barely functional lab bench, she would still be holding very strong opinions about it. It would be impossible not to. Aquaria was omnipresent on their campus - involved in everything from socials to volunteering in labs to being a TA. If a lowly undergraduate could qualify for it, then Aquaria was there. She might not always be front and center, but if you looked close enough at any facebook picture, she was always hovering somewhere in the corner or the back or even crouched at the very bottom - not that Miz had spent any amount of time looking at anything of the sort. 

But all things aside, Aquaria made herself so easy to hate: overly prepared for everything, hair impeccably curled every day of the week, always so damn friendly and warm and smiley and so fucking fantastically oblivious to everything going on around her that didn’t revolve around school. It was enough to make a girl scream.

She found herself jolted out of her thoughts when that shiny head of hair turned to look at her. A whole 180 that left her staring blankly back, uncomprehending. The professor too was turned in her direction expectantly. She found herself with her mouth open, mind racing for an excuse-

“Could CRISPR/Cas9 be used?” Blair’s clear voice piped up next to her. Miz snapped her mouth shut.

“Yes, it could be. Very good. Now can anyone tell me why you would not want to use CRISPR/Cas9?” The professor turned away and walked to the other end of the podium. Aquaria’s gaze followed suit. 

Miz slumped down in her seat, a whoosh of air leaving her like a deflated balloon.

“Aren’t you glad Blair actually pays attention to class?” Vixen’s grin was smug and devious.

“ _I_  would be more glad if you could both do the same,” Blair hissed under her breath, the words escaping through her smile.

Vixen mimed putting up her hands in defeat. “Yes ma’am.”

Miz did Vixen the favour of not smiling smugly back because _she_ was not an actual child.

When she looked back to the front of the class, they were still discussing methods and Aquaria was turned to the side, watching some boring khaki wearing boy try to explain in as many words as possible what technique he would use first. The tight lines on Aquaria’s face, getting more pronounced by the moment, was a more riveting show than the snowflake white with the SAT vocabulary and Miz found herself cataloging the minute changes in Aquaria’s face instead of the words coming out of Wonder bread.

Despite the nonstop onslaught of midterms and assignments, Aquaria still managed to have better skin than a newborn, albeit with a smudge of shadow under her eyes - though somehow, that hint of dark under her eyes only made her look better - softer, inviting,  _human_. Miz shifted in her seat. 

It was only natural, as observant as she was being, that she would accidentally look beyond the lines of acute stress on Aquaria’s face and see the rest of - well, the rest of her mostly smooth unblemished skin, marred by the occasional freckle and - with a surprise that wasn’t really surprise not at all, Miz noted - an unsightly bruise the size of a thumbprint right at the base of Aquaria’s throat. 

It was a small reminder rendered in violet and green that Vixen hadn’t been entirely off base with her assumptions. 

 

The air was cool and crisp outside by the time they left the lab. The stars were out and there was enough chill to the breeze that Miz felt giddy. It might have been all the oxygen getting to her head but there was something so inexplicably exciting about a beautiful night, something in the stars dotting the sky that promised fresh new beginnings and adventures and  _freedom_.

Aquaria’s cheeks and the tips of her ears were pink when Miz looked over.

“You going home?” she asked when she saw Miz looking at her.

Miz shrugged. “I think I’ll go get food first.”

“By yourself?” Aquaria squinted up at the night sky. “What’s open this late?”

“All the uptown pubs,” Miz pulled her hair elastic off and shook out her hair, “You wanna come?”

Aquaria pursed her lips, brows drawing together. 

“You can’t tell me you’re  _not_  hungry after standing for 8 hours,” Miz said, pushing without any real thought, her brain a bit mushy from all the standing and counting and general hunching over she’d done.

“How far is it gonna be?” Aquaria tilted her head to the side. 

Miz fixed her shoulder strap, pushing it up her shoulder. “Like 5 minutes by bus, but I thought I’d walk it since it’s so nice out.” She shrugged.

Aquaria stood with her nose scrunched up in thought.

 

The pseudo Irish pub they found themselves in was cramped, with two real tables subsidized by a bar and a stack of chairs leaning ominously in the dim light supplied by one fireplace and strategically placed candles. 

Miz nudged Aquaria with her shoulder, the other girl looked more than a bit spooked by the pub and even jumped a little when the tatted up server materialized out of the dark entry way. 

“Two?” the server asked, smacking her gum in time to her menu stacking.

“Yes please.” Miz tugged Aquaria in along with her.

Their choice of pub and the time of evening meant that they were two of three people in the pub besides the staff. The other patron had seated himself at the bar and was mesmerized by his bowl of nuts. Aquaria shot him a not very discrete glance before positioning to sit as far from him as she possibly could considering they had two tables to choose from.

“How did you even find this place?” Aquaria asked once she’d finished building up her mini coat and bag barrier between her and the rest of the room.

Miz shrugged. “I’ve tried everything within a five mile radius of campus,” she caught Aquaria’s disbelieving look and continued, “I don’t cook and school food is shit.”

And the food they were served was good. They had both opted for burgers and fries with an addition of salad, all of which was washed down with beer that neither of them particularly wanted but had accidentally peer pressured each other into.

Dinner had more conversation than Miz would’ve guessed for two people who, outside of the constraints of academia, were - for all intents and purposes - strangers. She had her phone out on the table, data at the ready. Instead, she ended up pulling it out of her pocket, laying it down on the table, and then forgetting about it until she was looking for her wallet.

To say that Aquaria was talkative was like saying that the sky was blue - or that grass was green and water was wet. Miz wasn’t unaware of Aquaria’s tendency to prattle on, but she wasn’t often the object of that constant stream of consciousness either and she had never before felt the need to contribute anything of value to the conversation. Sat in front of Aquaria as she was, center stage of those crystal blue eyes, she found herself volunteering as much information as Aquaria was offering up - and Aquaria was offering  _a lot_. There was no topic too taboo for her to bring up in between bites of her burger, no matter too insignificant to demand Miz’s insight as she tore into her fries.

In between her thoughts on things like their shared office space - unsightly - and the proposed changes to their curriculum - outrageous - Aquaria would wait, head listed to the side, for Miz to share her own thoughts. Small and insignificant as Miz’s tidbits sometimes were, Aquaria would nevertheless wait with her chin propped on her hand for Miz to finish everything she was saying each and every time, her baby blues managing to pick up on every speck of light in their vicinity and demanding attention and confessions in their own way. It was distracting enough that sometimes Miz found herself faltering in her speech, head empty before she realized she had her mouth open for too long and Aquaria would get that small crease between her brows and just a hint of a curve to her mouth.

And after dinner, it only seemed natural to pop into a real bar to get something to wash down that weird film beer always left in her mouth and Aquaria agreed with a little cheery hop down the steps of the pub entrance, her cheeks rosy from dinner and her smile cherubic in the yellow street lights. The conversation grew sparse and sporadic but never bite your nails kind of uncomfortable. The sky was clear, the stars bright, and the night breeze the right amount of brisk that they kept bumping into one another in attempts to dodge it, their snickers echoing back to them in the empty streets. 

The small table they snagged in a bar still full of real working adults was up against the windows. Between their obviously fruity drinks and the heavy bags they’d both dropped at their feet, Miz mostly felt like child wearing her mother’s heels. But Aquaria looked at ease, uncaring and seemingly unaware of the older patrons surrounding them now that they weren't comprised of a suspicious looking man at a bar. Her voice was just as exuberant as before and there was something so magnetic about her in that moment that Miz was soon too absorbed in their hushed talk about the worst administrative department at their school to pay the others much mind.

So caught up in the talk and Aquaria’s hands as she gestured wildly and those damn eyes, Miz would’ve been utterly incapable of putting her finger on when exactly they paid and left and how they even got back to the dorms if anyone asked. Luckily no one did. The halls were dark, lights out when they finally stumbled their way back to realize with a start and a hushed incredulous giggle that they lived in the same building.

When they reached her door, Miz stopped and turned to look at Aquaria. She leaned against her door jam and chewed on her lip. "I got a sleeping bag," she said apropos of nothing. 

Aquaria was another floor up. Not incredibly far under normal circumstances, but her head was feeling light and she was willing to bet that Aquaria wasn’t the freshest daisy after their drinks and the long walk all over uptown.

“And netflix.” 

Aquaria was wavering, her weight shifting from foot to foot.

“And we have no class tomorrow morning.”

She caved. 

By some miracle and just a little digging in the cabinet beside the sink, Miz came up with a spare toothbrush and a clean towel for Aquaria and they both took turns in the en-suite before spreading themselves across Miz’s bed, the sleeping bag completely forgotten, to watch some just released high school romcom Netflix had decided was a good call for a thursday night. 

And like most high school based romcoms, it was ridiculous. So ridiculous that Miz took to pointing out every single bit of heterosexual nonsense and Aquaria took to shushing her like the librarian that Miz had pegged her to be. So naturally, Miz only continued her vociferous critiques. 

“This is like number one on the list of top ten signs that your partner is being abusive.” Miz turned to see Aquaria’s disgruntled face only to turn a little faster than she intended and found Aquaria to be much closer than she’d thought. The blue of her eyes was washed grey by the light of the screen and the fine pale blonde of her lashes casted long shadows on her skin. The crease between her brows was back. The slight smirk was not. Miz’s words died in her throat.

The small sliver of air between them felt dangerous - uncharted territory in all its glory. From teaching assistant and student to coworkers, none of their shared experiences, previous and current, marked any sort of intimacy as particularly wise. But for all her intellect, Miz never counted herself as wise. Wisdom was for the old and retired who spent their days staring at the sea. 

She leaned forward, closing the distance and expecting nothing at all, just a blank space in between all the thoughts and the noise.

Aquaria tasted like her toothpaste, minty and fruity and a little alcoholic. She was still for a moment, long enough Miz started to draw back but then she was pushed back, against the mound of pillows she was thankful she had the foresight to stack behind her. Aquaria, as Miz was beginning to find out, was thorough and demanding in all areas of her life. She was an unforgiving kisser, nothing of the softness she had been when they’d been focused on the movie, and as Miz’s hands found their way into Aquaria’s hair and the delicate skin on the back of her neck, Miz discovered that she wasn’t in a forgiving mood either, leaving a trail of firm open mouthed kisses down the creamy white of Aquaria’s neck. Judging by Aquaria’s nails digging into her shoulder and the way she was curving her body up, the other girl didn’t mind. 

And when Miz mouthed her way south, well, she wasn’t unkind. 

 

The weekend passed in a blur of 36 hours, incessantly fast and not fast enough at all. Not fast enough for the sting of no calls or texts to wear off at any rate. A fact of the matter that Miz was mildly irritated by herself for. She had thought she was better than a leading role on Sex and the City. The sight of Aquaria leaning against the window with her bag at her feet and her phone in her hand was an unwelcome rebuff.

“Hey.” Aquaria pushed herself upright when she saw Miz walking towards her.

“Hi.” Miz dug through her pockets for the keys, looking down. 

“How’s it going?” Aquaria followed her into the empty lab, flicking on the lights. 

“It’s good. Lots of school stuff.” Miz unlocked the office in the back and didn't remind Aquaria that they had already done that same song and dance mere hours before. She dropped her stuff on top of her desk and pulled on her lab coat. 

“Cool, cool. Me too,” Aquaria’s amiable delivery was contradicted by her fidgeting.

It was strangely quiet in the lab without the radio on as it usually was when their supervisor was in, but with neither of them tall enough to turn it on without a step stool, they had to settle for the small clinks of glassware to keep them company. Well that, and the oppressive tension that Miz could feel with every fiber of her being. It had not been as noticeable in the large open lecture hall with Blair and Vixen next to her, but now in the shrill silence of the lab, the pressure was seeping in under her skin and over her muscles, making her fingers uncooperatively stiff.

 

The wait for the autoclave to finish was odious, each second stretching out into minutes and hours. Miz studied the small specks of colour in the wall behind the bulk of the autoclave. Aquaria had a glove off and her phone in hand, mindlessly swiping through her instagram, but when she reached the bottom, she also took to studying the WWII era infrastructure.

Aquaria’s restlessness had only been settled for a few seconds before she cleared her throat. It was barely audible over the clunking of the autoclave but it was loud enough Miz felt her stomach drop. 

“So - um, how was your weekend?” The whites of Aquaria’s knuckles against the dark grey of the bench were at odds with the levity in her voice.

Miz frowned at the wall, the number of specks and the size of them really were random and not just repeated patterns. “Good.”

“Mine too,” Aquaria was bright where her smile was concerned. “I actually went out to the farmer’s market for the first time on saturday. Got some really good zucchini.” 

“Sounds nice.” Miz squinted, not sure if her initial assessment of the pattern was correct or if she should go check her eyes. It had been a while since her last check up. Any and all other thoughts she had about when she had time to schedule in a check up was muffled by the unrelenting noise of blood rushing in her ears. Annoying. She sucked on her bottom lip, worrying it between her teeth. The weird static in the air was. Unhelpful. She opened her mouth.

“Aqua-”

“So I-”

They both reeled back a little, looking at each other, mouths parted. Miz recovered first. She made a little sweeping motion for Aquaria to go ahead. Aquaria’s little  _o_  turned into an uncertain smile.

“I just wanted to say - speaking of the  _weekend_ ,” she paused and twisted a stand of hair around her finger, “I realized that - um,” she paused again and this time, it was accompanied by a small laugh, “I realized that we never got each other’s numbers.”

“I’m sorry?” The rush of blood in her ears was replaced by white noise, a white noise of nothingness so blank that it was like her brain suddenly kicked the bucket and made off with every single neural connection she had. Her mouth moved but no sound came out. 

Aquaria continued, “Also apparently we know each other on no social media of any kind and your security settings are higher than the Pentagon so - um,” her eyebrows were drawn together but she was talking more to the door of the autoclave than she was to Miz, “I was just wondering if-”

“Yes.”

Aquaria look taken aback by the sharp acquiescence. “Yes?” she asked hesitantly.

“Um,” was Miz’s very intelligent answer. Her fingers pointed at her coat pockets and weirdly enough, redirected themselves towards the door of the autoclave room. “I have my phone,” she offered in lieu of very much not having her phone on her.

Aquaria looked between Miz’s hands and her face, taking up the herculean task of deciphering what Miz herself didn’t even quite know she was trying to communicate, and said, “Okay,” with a toothy smile. “That sounds good.”

The autoclave beeped. Loudly.

 

Vixen’s face when she caught sight of who Miz was texting in class was unbearably obnoxious. Blair kicked them both under the table. 

**Author's Note:**

> *I think I did the math right


End file.
